Show Notes
When you start out in your advertising career, Pentel in one hand, Macbook in the other, you seem to be surrounded by good work. Awards books are choc-a-bloc with it. As you go on, year by year, you seem to see less and less. For example, the first D&AD Annual looked at probably had an 80/20 ratio of good to bad. 10 years later those percentages are likely to have flipped. As you move on you become less swayed by awards, famous names or cool agencies, you now have 10 years of data to compare any new idea to - Is it as fresh as A? As funny as B or, actually, isn’t it just a reworking of C? It’s hard not to. You’re no longer that naïve, impressionable young thing you once were. In the music business they believe that our musical taste can be tracked back to our 16th summer; that's when we were most impressionable and hungry for experiences. As you get older it gets harder to find that tingle of excitement you feel when you experience things for the first time. In advertising, not being easily excited can be seen as being jaded. In fashion, architecture and many other creative they have different name for it; knowledge. I say this for two reasons; a) I’ve seen A LOT of stuff. b) David's stuff always causes a tingle, (not a minty-fresh, mouth tingle, but a work-fresh, excitement tingle). Somehow, he manages to produce work that feels like it's avoided committees, cliches and compromises. Whereas most work can be quickly categorised as good or bad, with David’s I often have to think about first. The Orange spot with the couple dancing; Is that good? The Guardian ‘3 Little Piggies’; Is that good? The Coal Drops Yard Branding with the seemingly random bunch of shapes, pictures and colours; Is that good? None are what you’d expect. Each take balls to go with. All are hard to ignore or forget. Much of the work he’s created and overseen at Drog5 London feels as though the team enjoyed thinking it up, then just couldn’t wait to make it and show the world. Good work tends to have that vibe. Unfortunately, we recorded this a while back, and David being David, he came up with a cunning way to make this podcast not only unusual, but complicated to make. Eventually, for reasons that would take too long to go into, it's coming out in a non-unusual, uncomplicated, familiar format. (Soz David.) It means that we don’t cover the great work Droga5 have been knocking out over the last year or so, like their exceptionally tingley Super Bowl ad for Amazon. Enjoy.
More from STUFF FROM THE LOFT - Dave Dye
Every day I get great old print ads popping up in my feed. I'm reminded of Volkswagen's self-deprecation, Nike’s humanity and BMW’s intelligence. It’s easy to forget that each owes its existence to a magazine. Whose huge readership is responsible for the quality of the ad. Putting your product in front of so many people justified billing so many creative hours. And signing off such an expensive photographer, illustrator, celebrity, location, set build, etc. It's also why the converse is true today. There are still great print ads being produced, but they’re rare. Pick up most magazines and you’ll discover a slender selection of ads that have had neither time or money spent on them. They look like the clients made them at the weekend, after putting the kids to bed. Today’s tiny magazine audiences don’t warrant more. Which is a shame. It’s hard to explain just how important magazines once were and the role they played in people’s lives. As David Hepworth says ‘they were the internet’. David knows magazines – having written for the NME, Sounds and Smash Hits before becoming editor, then launching Just Seventeen, Q, Empire, Mojo, More! Heat and Word amongst others. I’ve listened to his podcast for the last 19 years. Each week, David and his Old Grey Whistle Test co-host Mark Ellen talk music and a bit of whatever’s happened that week. Very occasionally, David will talk briefly about the nuts and bolts of running a magazine, in particular, the symbiotic relationship between magazines and it’s advertisers. It's fascinating and I’m always left wanting to hear more. So I asked him to talk more. We had a very enjoyable chat, I hope you enjoy it too.
Faxes. Magic Markers. Hard copies of Campaign. Offices. Grant projectors. PMTs. U-matics. Scalpels. Memos. Information Departments. Flash. Spray mount. Chinagraphs. Secretaries. Pinboards. Foamboard. Lightboxes. CS10. Lighter fuel. Paintbox. Dupes. 10x8s”. Contact sheets. Proofs.
A planner! The third. Well, the other two weren’t talking about their careers, Paul Feldwick discussed his great book ‘Why Does The Pedlar Sing?’ and Sarah Carter reflected on working with John Webster. So maybe it's my first? Creative operating the seventies hated planners. 'They ruined the business’ and ‘they took all the fun out of advertising’ being their most common complaint. As they see it; planners stole half their job. Their instincts were replaced by the data obsessed views of these Oxbridge types. Clarity became more important than cut through. They get accused of sanding off the edges and idiosyncrasies of their creative work. Therefore destroying Creative's winning lottery tickets. You can’t accuse Laurence Green of any of the above. Skoda ‘Cake’, Sony ‘Balls’, Cadbury’s ‘Gorilla’. (I could go on.) He’s wears his intelligence lightly, using it to simplify and explain, not impress. Regardless of the agency or creatives, the ads are simple, engaging and human. That can’t be a coincidence. Or could it? I asked him. Hope you enjoy it.
I never knew Martin at BMP. He kept a desk there. So I'd occasionally spot his green Bentley in Bishopsbridge Road. There'd be the odd a sighting in the building, a bit like Bigfoot or the Yeti, a glimpse of a blurry Martin moving through corridors, but way in the distance. Perhaps because of this, it didn’t occur to me to pick up the phone and ask him to do a podcast about his amazing career. But Charlie Crompton pushed me to do so, offering to broker the deal. (Thanks Charlie.) The timing is odd – BMP, or BMP/Univas/BDDP/ReevesRobertshaw/Davidson Pearce/Needham/DDB/Adam&Eve have just left 12 Bishopsbridge Road. After 55 years. It's difficult to even know where to begin to talk about the impact of Boase Massimi Pollitt. Obviously there's the birth of planning, the work of John Webster, all the agencies and people it gave birth too, but there's so much more. I’m also anxious about listing Martin’s achievements as he was so reluctant to take credit for them when we chatted. Or accept a compliment. Or criticise any employee who ever traipsed up their spiral staircase. Gossip? You try getting gossip out of a guy who’s been trained to interrogate Russian spies, it’s really hard. Despite this, we had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.
Bartle Bogle Hegarty opened its doors in 1982. Eight years later, Campaign voted them the agency of the decade. Why? Their work was considered, intelligent, and, in a decade often referred to as style-obsessed, BBH was the most style-obsessed. But they also had something few agencies have today; swagger. They had the confidence, or is it arrogance? to cut their own path. Refusing to do creative pitches, turning down business and making challenging creative calls few agencies would make. For example, on Audi, the created an end line only 5% of the population could understand – Vorsprung Durch Technik. For a desperate to become relevant to a new generation Levi’s, they soundtracked their ads with music their parents would consider old-fashioned. (Normal now, unusual then.) And on the subject of female sanitary protection, which everyone knew had to be dealt with delicately, like defusing a bomb. They risked it all, by boldly talking to women like human beings. Their Dr Whites ads ditched metaphors, blue liquid and any mention of roller-skating. Not only were these choices counterintuitive, they sold. As they put it in their AAR reel ‘We don’t sell (fade to black) We make people want to buy’. It was true, it was like they knew something others didn’t. Brands that chose BBH in the eighties were sprinkled with some kind of fairy dust that made them desirable and often fashionable. Since their launch, and for most of its first decade, John Hegarty worked writer Barbara Nokes. Together, they created the three campaigns above. The foundations of the agency. And one of their ads, Levi’s Black Sheep (below), remains as their logo and philosophy. We cover this in the second part of my chat with Barbara. Hope you enjoy it.